Rum Paul Stillskin

retailers

You don’t know me, I said.

Aye, and we don’t want to, the tall boy declared. It’s your sort come and turn the milk, make the dogs howl all night, and cause the mare to miscarry, so my dad says.

I’d never met this boy’s dad and already I disliked him.

By now, I was balanced on my feet and weighing my chances of breaking free. The tall boy might be bigger than me, but life with Sir had made me tough. If I could break through their circle, I thought I could outrun them.

A big if.

How do you know it’s a faerie, George?

Look at it. Too tall for a pixie, too pale for a brownie, and those ears, like Agnes says. Those ears are a dead giveaway.

The other girl whispered, Might be an elf.

Something in her voice swiveled my head so I could look at her—she stood nearly behind me. Her voice sounded beautiful, like the wind over the moor when it’s feeling playful, or like one of the songs I sang to myself.

And I saw she was beautiful, with light brown hair streaked blonde by the summer sun, and gentle eyes.

But George denied it. Nay—elves are pleasant-looking. Does that look pleasant to you, Mallie?

Mallie. I tucked her name away in my heart.

Praise for Laura Strickland’s CINDER-UGLY

Laura Strickland takes us beyond the fairy tale and ballroom and gives the readers a story full of pain and heartbreak, wonderfully balanced with hope and love.

~Elissa Blabac, InD'tale Magazine

~*~

What follows will make you cry, angry, and appreciative of your own life.

~Lisa O’Connor, Author and Reviewer

~*~

And for RUM PAUL STILLSKIN

Not my usual type of story but this was so moving and well written that I kept getting lost in the story.

~Colleen Donnelly, author of Mine to Tell, Asked For, Love on a Train, The Lady’s Arrangement,

and Out of Splinters and Ashes

Rum Paul Stillskin

by

Laura Strickland

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Rum Paul Stillskin

COPYRIGHT © 2019 by Laura Strickland

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: info@thewildrosepress.com

Cover Art by Diana Carlile

The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

PO Box 708

Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

Publishing History

First Fantasy Rose Edition, 2019

Print ISBN 978-1-5092-2612-2

Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-2613-9

Published in the United States of America

Dedication

For all those who doubt they deserve love.

Books by Laura Strickland

published by The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

Hearts of Caledonia Series:

Loyal and True, Book One

Valiant and Wise, Book Two

Noble and Blessed, Book Three

The Guardians of Sherwood Trilogy:

Daughter of Sherwood, Book One

Champion of Sherwood, Book Two

Lord of Sherwood, Book Three

Dead Handsome: A Buffalo Steampunk Adventure

Off Kilter: A Buffalo Steampunk Adventure

Sheer Madness: A Buffalo Steampunk Adventure

Steel Kisses: A Buffalo Steampunk Adventure

Tough Prospect: A Buffalo Steampunk Adventure

Devil Black

His Wicked Highland Ways

One Enchanted Scottish Knight

Honor Bound: A Highland Adventure

The Hiring Fair

The White Gull

Forged by Love (sequel to The White Gull)

Words and Dreams (sequel to Forged by Love)

Stars in the Morning

Awake on Garland Street

Cinder-Ugly

Rum Paul Stillskin

Mrs. Claus and the Viking Ship

The Tenth Suitor

Christmastime on Donner’s Mountain

Ask Me (part of the Candy Hearts Series)

Part One

Chapter One

What’s in a name? Over the course of my life, I’ve had any number of appellations thrown at me. I must have heard every manner of insult and slur. And, my life being what it is, with me fated to live so much of it over and over again, the years have been many, and long.

I am here to tell you now, when all is said and done, a name is but a name—a label—and means little. It is the heart of a man, or woman for all that, which matters. Some hearts are true and some empty of truth, and you cannot always tell the difference just by looking.

Born around the year 1620 and then abandoned under the proverbial cabbage leaf, I no longer remember the exact day of my birth. An old woman found me lying half hidden in her garden when she went out to hoe her vegetables and, being kind of nature, took me back to her husband, a drunkard.

This happened back in the days when folk still believed in the Fae, when the church had but a tentative hold on the land, and spirits walked the downs. These two old folks lived isolated, away from the town, yet believed they shared that bleak moor with others, unseen. So when the old woman brought me in out of the misty morning and showed me to her husband, who’d been busy drinking all night long, he stared at me blearily and at once declared, Woman, that’s an elf child.

Do you think so? she asked uncertainly, peering down at me lying wrapped in her shawl. It’s a wee boy, and he looks new born.

Throw it outside, advised the man callously.

’Twill surely die if I do.

It will bring all manner of trouble, if you don’t.

Perhaps she should have listened to him. Had I perished then, in the damp beneath the cabbage plant, it might have prevented all the heartache that followed. But the old woman had never had a child of her own, so she sat with me on her knee while outside it began to rain and blow, and she told herself she couldn’t be so heartless as to put me out.

When the old man roused from his drunken doze much later and saw me still there beneath his roof, he cried, Aye, that’s a rum thing.

So they called me Rum. I called them Ma and Sir when I grew old enough to speak. According to Ma, it did not take me long; I began jabbering before I could crawl, and learned words at an unnatural rate.

Always clever with words and games and riddles, she told me later.

It was as well I’d been blessed with a good brain, for I had not much else about which I might brag. As I grew, it became all too painfully evident I was not human, or at least not entirely human. My head was long and narrow, and my ears came to exaggerated points. My arms and legs grew narrow also and looked fragile, though I possessed prodigious strength and could accomplish vast amounts of work if I chose, which I rarely did.

The old woman treated me kindly, even though she often speculated aloud as to what I might be. The old man was the first to give me a string of ugly names—everything he could imagine, from a bad-un to lazy, no-good elf.

He cannot be an elf, after all, Ma would protest earnestly, and thoughtlessly. Elves are beautiful.

She did not pause to think about injuring my feelings. Neither of them did. In their eyes, I had no right to the sort of conceit that might take offense. The lowest of the low I was and, as Sir frequently declared, lucky he gave me house room.

The room he did give me was part of the loft, up under the thatched roof. The rest of the loft served as storage for everything from old clothes to broken furniture. Among these I eventually discovered a chest that contained relics from Sir’s youth when he’d gone to sea. But that had been long ago. When I knew him, he only occasionally stumped away across the downs upon some undisclosed business, and spent most of his time drunk there beside the fire, swearing and quite often throwing things at me.

Ma did all the actual work around the place, caring for our lone cow and the hogs, when we had them. She kept chickens and sometimes traded the eggs for things she couldn’t afford to buy. She scrubbed and spun wool and worked most of the hours that came her way.

I should have helped more than I did, given she showed me the only affection I ever saw. When I got old enough, she taught me how to do most of the chores, including the spinning.

Truth was, I hated being confined to any sort of work. I possessed great amounts of energy and could, as I say, accomplish much if I chose. But spinning, chopping wood, and splitting kindling bored me. Planting or hoeing the garden made me feel itchy and wild.

I liked to while away my time out on the downs, or sitting by the fire, on the rare occasions Sir wasn’t there ahead of me. I loved staring into the flames and watching the pictures that formed, moved, and changed.

If Sir caught me at it, he would clout me on the head and swear at me. That’s a rum occupation for a young lad, Rum, he’d sneer. What do you think you are, a goblin?

I didn’t know what I was, but I spent considerable time thinking on it. In many ways, I seemed human. I had five fingers on each hand and five toes on each foot. But I could tell I wasn’t like anyone else. Sometimes Ma took me to the village with her, and I saw other children there. The ones who were near my size, and so presumably near my age, seemed put together differently. Their legs were shorter, their bodies sturdier. Their hair lay flat on their heads or fell to their shoulders in fetching curls.

My hair did not. It stuck up all over my head—Ma had never found a comb or brush that could make it lie down—and was black as the coal clunkers at the bottom of the fire.

None of the other children had sharp, clever faces like mine either, or eyes that tipped up at the outer corners, as green as new fern leaves ready to unfurl. None of them could talk as quickly or run as fast as I could. And none of them showed any inclination to play with me. Instead they stood about with their thumbs in their mouths, fixing me with empty stares.

What is he? I heard women ask Ma more than once.

She inevitably answered, Why, a boy, of course.

They would shake their heads and lower their voices. That ain’t no boy.

Didn’t they know that lowering their voices did no good? I could hear a vole stir in the grass at fifty paces, could hear what the wind said when it swept across the downs. I could hear what Ma and Sir said about me, all the way up in the loft.

They said—

We can’t keep him. He grows unnatural, like.

I cannot throw him out into the world.

You never should have brought him in, in the first place. I told you so that first morning.

’Tis a sin to let a creature die.

Not a creature such as that. Mark me, woman, he will slit our throats in our beds some night.

I lay and thought about it, the prospect of slitting their throats. I knew where Ma kept the knives. And Sir had a flick blade he wore in his boot, and left there when he took the boots off. For that matter, I could use the axe.

He’s a good boy.

He is not. He is turning into something neither you nor I want to see.

Maybe we should send him to chapel.

Aye, if you want the roof to fall in on him.

He needs to go to school.

I doubt they’ll have him, Martha.

Martha was Ma’s real name.

Besides, he’s already too clever for his own good—and ours.

Husband…what do you think he is?

Ma never got an answer to that question. At least, I usually fell asleep before I heard one.

I would dream deep dreams then, of fire, the light of a great beacon reaching high into the sky. The fire contained pictures just like the ones that danced in the hearth, only harder to see. I thought that perhaps people lived in the fire and had answers to all my questions.

Perhaps they were like me, those folk.

But one of the first things Ma had taught me was: Don’t touch the fire. It hurts. It burns.

’Twould be entirely mad, then, to leap clear into the flames, searching for others like myself.

Chapter Two

Names, so they say, are magical. I never had any trouble believing in magic. In fact, it seemed inconceivable to me that anyone could fail to believe in it.

How could a person disbelieve a power that made grass sprout and grow green? That caused a radish to spring up from a tiny seed and become red? That taught the birds to sing and brought the rain when the earth needed it?

Of course magic existed.

Even Ma and Sir believed in it. Ma often left a tiny dish of milk out for the faeries, though I knew for a fact the cat drank it. Sir frequently made the sign against evil, often when I walked into the room unexpectedly.

To be sure, Sir also made that sign at the pastor of the village chapel when he came calling. Reverend Rogers did not darken the door of Sir’s humble cottage often. By the